Spoilers

“Fishes”

Holy cow.

What a chaotic, hectic, raw episode of The Bear.

I should have guessed that this was going to be something special when I saw that the run time on this episode was over an hour, which was uncommon for the show up until this point. I had no idea what was coming.

We got an entire flashback episode to a Berzatto family Christmas dinner that had everybody on edge and led to some of the most dramatic, mentally unstable moments I have ever seen on the TV screen.

The cast was unbelievable. Along with our normal cast members, we got Jamie Lee Curtis as Donna Berzatto, Carmy mother, Jon Bernthal returning as Michael, Oliver Platt returning as Uncle Jimmy, Bob Odenkirk as Uncle Lee, Sarah Paulson as cousin Michelle, and John Mulaney as Michelle’s boyfriend Stevie. These amazing actors brought such a dynamic to the ensemble that was draining to watch, in the best possible way.

The amount of disfunction going on in this house was just stunning. Every moment, every interaction between these characters were amplified by the tension, the clear mental illness going on among the family members. What started as friendly interaction devolved into anger and resentment within seconds.

Stevie’s beautiful grace seemed to disarm the situation and a lesser show would have sent this show off into a happy ending, but that is not The Bear. It quickly spiraled into a series of shocking conclusions to the episode, punctuated by Donna driving her car through the house’s wall.

Jon Bernthal and Jamie Lee Curtis gave unbeleivable performances and deserve Emmy Awards for them. Bernthal was nominated for Best Guest Actor in a Comedy, but it did not look like Jamie Lee was nominated and that is a shame.

This was the most amazing hour of television I have seen in a long time. One of the most dramatic episodes of a ‘comedy’ that you are ever going to see. Amazing character work from an amazing cast of actors at the top of their games. I was dreading what I thought was coming, but I had no idea.

A special episode, no doubt.